Editorials in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune demean Bush and libel Rumsfeld, stirring hate, inciting enmity, making a mockery of rational discourse.

The Left flies under permanently false colors.-- David Horowitz, “The Politics of Bad Faith” (1998)

Set up
a straw man. Kick it. Rip it. Set it ablaze. Nasty
trick in demagogues’ bags? Sure it is. And one of the oldest
Machiavellian tricks in the book, easy.

It’s a tactic used by politicos both left and right, also by unhinged news
media nowadays doing their best imitations of Party organs. The latter
include a Midwest mainstream daily where I live, whose editorials defame
President George W. Bush, and libel Donald Rumsfeld, clearly to incite enmity,
thus to stir an angry party base. Works, too, gauging from uninformed,
sometimes hateful letters to editors from party faithful, reciting spin as
fact and partisan invective as reason.

That newspaper is the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a mouthpiece of and for the ardent liberal class. The Wall Street Journal’s
John Fund dubs it “one of the most left-wing newspapers in the nation,” a
tag it richly deserves, if recent con jobs on its readers are any measure
of that. Think of a newspaper equivalent to The Nation magazine and you’ll get the picture.

Straw man tactics invite clueless, ofen livid letters to editors, but these
fail to do true justice to a democracy in which informed citizens are expected
to weigh in on issues. When “advertisements contain the only truths
to be relied upon in a newspaper,” as Thomas Jefferson facetiously wrote,
we’re in perilous straits. Alas, his facetiousness becomes reality!

Partisan lies and straw men erected to “oust” an “unelected” “unilateral”
“tax-breaks-only-for-the-rich” “deserter” “cowboy” and his “regime” are staples
of the assault. These and other one-line lies are recited, manta-like,
ever-so glibly, by “liberal” media that’s anything but liberal in the classic,
or a literal sense. Closed minds are a byproduct of the assaults, designed
(or so it seems) to provoke loathing, more than to enlighten. Unfounded assertions
and wild-eyed accusations (e.g., “Bush lied!”), touted as “fact” then accepted
by the naïve, boggle the mind. (P.T. Barnum got it right.)

Naturally, straw men have no place in editorials or anywhere else. Period.
They’re pernicious, doing harm to human dignity. Whether as name-calling
shortcuts for coherent argument, or as nutty media ploys to avoid dealing
straight-up with facts, they debase rational discourse. Sloganeering
and cheap political posturing are among the results -- dumbing-down not only
deviancy, as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynahan (D-NY) famously said, but also
of America itself.

Three editorial statements in “my” paper may illustrate here this actually
illiberal mugging of truth and plain sensibilities:

Exhibit #2: “Donald Rumsfeld…took pains [in the 1980s,
as Special Envoy to President Reagan] to reassure [sic] Saddam that those
activities [gassing of Kurds and Iranians] wouldn’t be a problem…”
(in “Saddam’s trial,” Jan. 3). Patently false, a ghastly charge, clearly
over the top, makes Rumsfeld no less than accessory to Saddam’s mass murder.
Easily refuted by declassified State Dept. reports, this line does not pass
the giggle test, even by supermarket tabloid standards. Libel, anyone?
With nasty malice aforethought by the editors? Could be.

Exhibit #3: “Bush implied [sic] that every American got tax relief last year, but that’s not true…”
(in “State of the Union,” Jan. 21). President Bush said -- or “implied”
-- nothing of the sort. Classic spin, it’s the very definition of straw
man. Make up something out of whole cloth, or straw, then rip it.
Such is the juvenile-type intellectual dishonesty found all too often in
mainstream media. What the president really said: “You [Congress]
have lowered taxes for every American who pays income taxes.” Quite
true.

Clearly an agenda, not rational argument, drives such attacks. Facts
are dismissed, “dissed” or ignored. Witness a Paul Krugman or a Molly
Ivans column, fomenting hate by distorting facts, building straw Bushmen
to rip. Their deceits and disregard for truth do not go unchallenged,
though, in an era of Internet connections. (Why the growth of “blogs” and
e-zines? To combat the grip on news and views by left-liberal media,
just maybe?)

Why the straw men? Obviously, to “get Bush” at any cost. Anything
goes to trash this president -- a good and decent man, a real-life Christian
to vilify. Would that punditry about him, and this administration,
be based on reality, rather than straw men, a la Emmanuel Goldstein,
the hate object in Orwell’s classic “Nineteen Eighty-four.” Fomenting
hatred cannot be good for the soul, or for the United States, and brings
on a set of fearsome consequences -- a topic too far, for another day.

Gary
Larson is a retired association CEO and former business magazine editor residing
in Minnesota. He is not the cartoonist of the same name. Larson
is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s School of Journalism and Mass
Communication.